They're selecting for neutrality. What both lawyers and the judge all want to see is someone who doesn't have an opinion on the case before it begins. That neutrality could be a product of them being easily swayed by arguments, or it could be someone who is coldly logical and makes a decision purely based on the evidence presented.
I watched about 65 people get dismissed, and what they all had in common was they were visibly emotional before the trial had even begun. That is what gets you dismissed. Meanwhile, about half the folks in the jury box didn't even realize that the fact that we were still sitting in the jury box meant we would probably be serving on the jury, we were still like "Oh, I'm probably going to get dismissed because I'm X kind of person and the lawyers aren't going to want X kind of person." If you can think of it that dispassionately, you are the type of person the lawyers want.
The person was the oldest or second oldest in the room. I don't think that was a coincidence.
(I was definitely not the oldest in the room - I think I was like the 2nd or 3rd youngest.)
May I ask in which state?
In every state I've been on a jury, the foreman was chosen by the other jurors.
The person was the oldest or second oldest in the room. I don't think that was a coincidence.
This was never the case in any of the juries I was on.
MA is the outlier a lot of the times when it comes to court law it seems.
It's hard to believe there are still people who think having a witness take the stand in their own defense is a good thing. The only trial I've been in where that happened, the witness did what every defense attorney fears: he made things worse for himself than they were before (and things were pretty bad: it took us less than half an hour to convict).
How do you know this, when in the previous sentence you admitted:
I have never been called for jury duty
I've been on juries three times so far. The lawyers absolutely did not filter for people who could likely be swayed.
Or perhaps you confused "people who are likely to be swayed" with "people who have an open mind."